Holy Roman EU

The European Union has been steadily expanding eastwards since the Berlin Wall came down. It has recently incorporated Bulgaria and Romania, and has been lapping up against Ukraine's borders for some time. It was the EU's attempt to suck the Ukraine into its orbit that has caused the civil strife now taking place there.

What is with the EU's need to expand? Is it the need to acquire Eastern Europe's resources?

Uh, what resources?

Perhaps it is the economic potential of these partners.

Yeah, right. Bulgaria and Romania are basket cases, as is the Ukraine, and they only thing they've provided so far is cheap labour immigrants and extra votes for far-right parties in France, Holland, etc.

Viewed on the map, it looks like empire building. But it's an empire without an army - remove the US from NATO and what is left is not impressive. Or even united. But Europe's military has played no part in the EU's expansion. The only other empire that expanded like this was the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire was created by the Catholic church in Rome, virtually picking up from where the collapsed Roman empire left off, hence the name. It was essentially a cabal of popes and cardinals in Rome calling on European leaders to act on its behalf, rather like the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. And like the EU, it had no army of its own. Yet it controlled much of eastern Europe and later, via the Habsburgs, much of the world (as it was known then).

Quite why the EU wishes to emulate the Holy Roman Empire (whose remnants only disappeared with Austria's defeat in WW1) is not really clear, any more than why the popes felt the need to copy the Roman emperors. But the parallels between the EU and the empire of the popes are striking. Including, curiously enough, religion.

On paper, the EU is about trade, right? Which is to say, its all about business and the bottom line: profit. That makes sense. So why is the EU hoovering up all these poor eastern European states (and retaining poor southern European states) which will cost the EU a lot but contribute little? And why did the EU keep turning down Turkey for EU membership, even when it was being labelled as a rising player in the world markets?

Because eastern Europe is Christian and Turkey is Muslim.

That answer may not make sense in these modern, secular times, but it is essentially what we have. The EU rebuffed Turkey several times, yet has sent its envoys to court the Ukraine and encourage the toppling of its elected anti-EU government, even though Ukraine has a declining population, few resources and economy that makes Greece look solvent, with a debt to match. Without Russian assistance, the country will be bankrupt in months.

But still the EU considers it worth provoking Russia for.

The popes and the Habsburgs over-reached, draining their resources on expansion, wars and maintenance of territory. It fell into decline in the face of its rivals in England and Holland, was torn apart by protestant challenges and eventually faded from history.

One wonders what will become of the EU and its cardinals in Brussels. It already faces growing demands for autonomy within its provinces, its prosperity depends almost entirely on the German economy and it is unable to project itself militarily to protect its interests unless it aligns itself with the US. It depends on Russia for its energy and on African and Asian immigration to prop up its aging population.

The popes used to pray. EU bureaucrats might also want to pray, but they need to be careful of what they pray for.

Rubber Band Feminism

The home was always the woman's domain - her nest, her secret garden, her spiritual base. Feminism set out to change that. It called upon women to step out into the world and contest men for its dominance. It asked them to see beyond the kitchen sink and to expand their horizons.

That was then. What does feminism call for now? For men to come back and help them with the housework.

Stretch a rubber band and it always returns.

The Paradox

21st Century Feminism:

"I want equal treatment, I want deference and I want special protection. What do you mean that's contradictory? Why can't I have it all?"

Moral Codes

"Moral codes are always obstructive, relative, and man-made. Yet they have been of enormous profit to civilization. They are civilization. Without them, we are invaded by the chaotic barbarism of sex, nature's tyranny, turning day into night and love into obsession and lust."

Camille Paglia
Sexual Personae

High, Middle and Low Classes

“The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.”

George Orwell.

Best Actor

And the Oscar for Best Actor 2014 goes to... US Secretary of State John Kerry, who said, "You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests."

You couldn't make it up, really.

Libya, Syria... and now Ukraine

Western hypocrisy has gone into overdrive. And the media are in lockstep with their governments. We've had a 'humanitarian' intervention into Libya that toppled a government (still illegal under international law, by the way, without a specific UN resolution) and left a country in chaos, then we had a cheering of Egyptian 'activists' while the Western paid military toppled another government (elected, this time) and massacred civilians without a single sanction being imposed by the US or Europe (and with US politicians talking about the military 'restoring democracy'). We had Syria being stirred into civil war by outside hands, but again described as a 'people's uprising', with the West immediately recognising the opposition as the legitimate government (shortly before they fragmented). And now we have the Ukraine, with EU and US dignitaries repeatedly visiting the demonstrators in Kiev and offering encouragement and support (can you imagine Russia and China coming to New York or London to encourage the Occupy protesters? No, me neither), referring to them as the 'people of Ukraine' (never mind the East Ukrainians), with the Western media gushing over their demands (to topple an elected president) while failing utterly to mention the far right groups within the protester camps, and with everyone in the West referring to the parliament that formed afterwards under the occupation of the protesters as 'the interim government'. When the Ukrainian president was in power, the media here quoted the protesters. Now that the president has been ousted and the Eastern Ukrainians are starting to protest, the media here now quote 'the interim government'.

The bias is so obvious, I don't know how any news reader can keep a straight face on the TV anymore.

But the other thing to mention here is the sheer incompetence of Western meddling (I can't dignify it by calling it diplomacy). Libya is reeling (as is Iraq, that other 'successful intervention'), Egypt is a military state and Syria is so bad that even the liberal and neo-con interventionists hesitated to demand more intervention.

The West has been encouraging the separation of Ukraine from Russia (like they did with Georgia, and look how that turned out), and now they are surprised that Russia has mobilised to support ethnic Russians in Ukraine and the strategically vital zone of the Crimea.

Western commentators are currently bleating about Russia crossing red lines, threatening stability in the Ukraine, and threatening the Ukraine itself.

The US backed Georgia not so long ago and hinted that they might lend it NATO support. Russia struck across its border, and US promises never materialised. Now the EU is promising Ukraine entry into its market and the US (via the IMF) is promising loans. Meanwhile the Russian army has mobilised on the border and 'armed men' have seized control of airports in the Crimea. What do you think will come of the West's promises now? Hmmm?

Western hubris, arrogance and sheer stupidity have pushed Russia into a corner and forced it to act. Russia was never going to abandon either its ethnic population in Ukraine nor it's vital Black Sea base in the Crimea. The Ukrainian economy was in meltdown, and the EU was never going to give it the money it needed to avoid crashing, and neither will the US. What an earth were these people hoping to gain from this? The US have warned Russia against military action, but there are no NATO forces nearby that can make that threat credible. They can't threaten Russia with sanctions, because it's too big, supplies Europe with most of its gas and oil, and is a UN security council member.

Both halves of Ukraine are going to come to blows, and Russia will not let its side fall. If the tension is not resolved in the next couple of days, then the only way to prevent civil war on a Syrian scale will be to partition the country, with Russia getting Crimea and the industrial east, and Europe (and NATO) getting the EU-friendly west. And this partition would have to be done pretty quickly.

And what is the West going to do with its side of the Ukraine (apart from complain about Ukraine immigrants flooding into the EU as cheap labour)? Does it even really want it?

They said the world changed after 9/11. It did. The leaders of the US and the EU, both on the left and the right, got a whole lot more stupid, infinitely more arrogant and a whole lot more hypocritical. And they also forgot all the most basic rules of diplomacy.

Diplomacy is about the art of the possible, not the fulfilment of ideological fantasies.

You know, if you stripped away all the ideology, all the rhetoric, and just concentrated on the actions, you'd think the West was already at war with Russia - or rather, that the Cold War never ended. Because they're not treating it as another sovereign nation in a global forum - they're treating it as an enemy that must be outwitted, outmanoeuvred and defeated. They think that Russia must step down and surrender its interests or be considered an irrational enemy, regardless of its case. And all this while both NATO and the EU blatantly expands towards Russia's borders.

And after Russia, China is next.

What are our leaders (and the idiot media commentators who cheer them on and deliberately misreport on their behalf) thinking?

Weren't two world wars enough?